Dance therapy

1. Dr.Maria Zám
Hungary
ELTE University
BARCZI GUSZTAV FACULTY

2. Message of the silence
Dance therapy as a self-knowledge method
TO BE IN THE FLOW
- THE AIM OF THE DANCE THERAPY

3. Dance as an Opportunity of Self-
Knowledge
• Dance therapy makes the personality the
center, and leads it through experimental
learning, and dance therapy focuses on
connecting the self, the other, and the
community, and the space to each other

4. The Body
• We consider the body as an information base
of the events of our life. We store information
in our cells. In cells our body stores every
event and memory we have had since we
conceived.

5. What dance therapy does?
• DANCE THERAPY shows every little motif of our
every day life, and offers a discovery of soul and
body unit. It measures where we are open and
where we close ourself and how our body reacts
on everything that happens to us.
• We can gain self-knowledge through dance, and
moving.
• It makes us to find the first step in the road of
healing

6. Body consciousness
• Dance is our most natural and most instinctive
artistic way of expression of all. The human
body always expresses itself, the body is in
constant moving inside and outside too.
• We store information in our cells
• Our body since we conceived have stored
every memory and events we went through.

7. What happens with this information?
• Dance and moving is able to clean the „rocks”
that obstacle the way of the energy flow.
• „Rocks” are the embodyment of the psychic
and phisical traumas
• dance is able to move these information rocks
away and to create new relationships, new
ties

8. The cerebral cortex and cells
• Perceiving, learning and the memory, the
plans of our activities, the making process, the
creativity and other cognitive processes are
linked to the cerebral cortex, which is the
center of the highest standard nerve function.

9. BERNHARD WALDENFELS
• „Considerding closely the problematic of the body we don’t have to
forget that body is much more than a simple example as every
experience is a body experience too.
• But body not like a pure mental being that can see but cannot be
seen, and a pure natural thing that can’t see but can be seen – body
is both hit can see and can be seen as well, and can touch and can
be touched.
• Body is not out of time and space in the land of nowhere, and it is
not in a given corner of time and space, but body rather belongs to
Here and Now, the point of the creation of space and time. But
body has the quality of an in-space-and-time corp too.”
• / Professor of philosophy at the Ruhr University, in Bochum,
Germany
• Bernhard Waldenfels: Sinnesschwellen. Studien zur
Phänomenologie des Fremden

10. Dance is an ancient way of expression
• Dance, dance rituals such as birth, fertility
rituals, season and man, warriror and peace
dances have followed, supported and cured
the life of the people since the creation of
human kind.

11. Rhythm in nature tribes
•
• in nature tribes rhythmical dance activity has a very
important role in tribal life.
• It closely relates to magic, but it is in every phase and field
of their life. They couldn’t imagine their every day life
without dance:
• · they dance if they go to hunt or if they get back from
hunt;
• · they dance to have abundant crop;
• · they dance if somebody gets sick and they would like
him to be cured;
• · they dance if they are glad or sad.

12. Rhythm
• Rhythm is nature itself and it is natural.
Rhythm is not strange for people live in nature
because they live their life in the rhythm of
how the world goes. Today people have to live
out of rhytm, serving the expectations of the
world outside that is getting to be more and
more fake

13. Messages in the Body
- Messeges Begin to Appear in Dance
• We think there is big importance of the wit of
the body, the non-verbal messages, and our
creative possibilities in this method. Ilnesses
and symptoms are considered only to be
signs, which show where we are in our life and
what are the things we should change

14. Dance as an Oportunity
• We can create new views and relations with
old experiences. We can recognise and
examine our automatisms, patterns, indirect
movements, postures with the help of self-
expression in dance.

15. • Benefits of Dance Movement Therapy
• Dance therapy can helps
• person to increase his/her self-awareness,
self-esteem and personal autonomy. It may
help to acknowledge the links between
thought, feelings and actions. It can help to
increase and rehearse adaptive coping
behaviors.

16. • Dancing is one way for expressing and
managing overwhelming feelings or thoughts.
It can be used as a tool to help person to
communicate and be interactive with other
persons.

17. • With movement and dance a person can test the
impact of him/herself on others. To realize your
inner and outer reality and compare the feelings
about inner (mind) and outside environment.
• By moving the person can initiate physical,
emotional and/or cognitive shifts. It can help to
learn new social interaction skills. Dancing is a
good way to express non-verbal communication
and make contact with the others.

18. Movement is a Dance?
• Even the smallest movements, gestures,
postures, different types of body expression
are dancing therapeutically important.
• Very fine movemenet is a self-express of the
soul, from the age of the litle baby, from the
unconscieous

19. For Whom is Advantages
• The complexity of the approach, the integrative
dance therapy can be used in very different fields
and for many people
• Furthermore it can be used for people of
different age groups, for several diseases or
disorders and in different contexts.
• Mainly the dance therapy used for healthy
people who want to know more theirselfs
• Dance therapy is a tool for personal development

20. • It may be used as a relieving therapy for
anyone experiencing difficulties or concerns
with emotional problems, conflict or distress.

21. • It can be useful tool for people who want to
enhance their personal communication skills,
self-exploration or self-understanding.
• Dance therapy may be seen as a way of
alternative communication method for people
who may find some feelings or experiences
too overwhelming or too difficult to
communicate by words alone.

22. • It can help people who have problems bound up
in bodily form; in distortions or concerns about
their body image, in actual movement difficulties
such as tension or blocked areas of the body,
impaired movements or in anxieties about
proximity, physical contact or trust.
• Dance therapy allows people with impairment or
trauma may to acknowledge and understand
personal areas of strength and weakness.

23. • Dance Movement Psychotherapy may be
recommended as a primary service or as a
complement to other forms of on-going
treatment, rehabilitation or education. The
therapy can be short or long term and is
available for adults and children.

24. What are the Focuses in Dance
Therapy
• exercise-centered
• experience-centered
• Self-recognition centered

25. Do We Speak?
• Linguistic communication is not a necessary
condition for the dance therapy work.
• There can be understanding even without
spoken language
• . Atmospheres and moods can be expressed
through movement and dance, they can be
shared and communicated.

26. Verbal and Non-verbal skills
development
• Dance therapy combines verbal and nonverbal
practices and can also help to develop language
skills.
• Language builds on the development of other
skills in dealing with the environment, such as the
opportunity of preverbal communication,
perception and imitation.
• Dance therapy can take this up and create
situations in which these is encouraged by
movement, dance, voice and sound.

27. How We Can Communicate
• Dance is a social and communicative
phenomenon, communication and interaction
are integral parts.
• In movement and dance, the experience of a
common rhythm or a through improvisation
developed image or an atmosphere makes the
experience of a community and of being part
of group possibility

28. Dance Is a Communication Tool
• Proximity and distance as design elements of
contact, encounter or relationship can be
tested and experienced.
• The use of different materials such as ropes,
ribbons, balloons, scarves or masks may make
indirect contacts easier or may give the
opportunity to hide and cover oneselve.

29. Apperception
• The integrative dance therapy can stimulate
perception and their integration in many
ways.
• The apperception of the different senses can
be exercised “center-functional” or even
“experience-activated” stimulated or edged.

30. • The focus hereby can be:
• the perception of one's body, physical
sensations, reactions and feelings (for
example to realize the own body through
touching or tapping or in contact with the
floor)

31. • the apperception of the environment in form
of experiences with materials or with space
(for example the experience with hard and
soft materials, with ropes, scarves or balls)
• finally, the perception of other people,
whether therapist or therapist or other people
from the environment

32. Self-expression
• Through improvisation, role playing, the
dancing of little stories and small design tasks
the possibilities of immediate self-expression
are expanded.
• Secondly, the repertoire of expression can be
extended in a way that emotions, feelings and
ideas are expressed in movement and dance.